


Daisy's Bahrain

by daisyqiaolianmay (skinman)



Series: The Parts That Make A Whole [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 6 months later, Angst, Family, Gen, Parallels, Spoilers, mentions of canon character deaths, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 11:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7101199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinman/pseuds/daisyqiaolianmay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“May is concerned that Daisy won’t be able to forgive herself for everything that happened when she was swayed... If anything, her desire right now is to continue to protect and guide Daisy so that she doesn’t suffer similar consequences and shut down the way May has.” - Ming-Na Wen</p><p>An exploration of the spoilers for AoS season 4: Months after she runs away May tracks down Daisy just to speak to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daisy's Bahrain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marvelthismarvelthat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelthismarvelthat/gifts).



Daisy had always been a people person. She’d spent a lot of her childhood trying to get people to like her, to accept her. It had got to a point where it had just become part of her; that need to be liked. So, to be on the run like this, to have estranged herself from the people she cared about, it felt unnatural. It felt wrong.

She told herself every day, she forced herself to acknowledge that it was what was best... for everyone. Even if it didn’t feel that way sometimes. They had their jobs. She had hers.

Being on that base, all she saw was Trip, Andrew, Hunter, and Bobbi ... and Lincoln. She just couldn’t be there anymore. When she’d joined S.H.I.E.L.D some part of her had acknowledged that she would lose people, there would be those who would walk out of her life. She’d known people would be torn out of her life, but she’d never really thought it through till it happened.

She could remember the first time she’d really felt it. Back on the bus; a home that felt a lifetime behind her now. She’d been a different person then. Looking into Jemma’s red-rimmed eyes, paired with a pallid, gaunt face. The scientist been trying not to sob as she asked Coulson _‘Do you think you could tell my dad first? I think my mum would take it better coming from him.’_ It hadn’t been a request. Jemma Simmons had believed she was going to die that day.

Skye had believed it too. She’d barely registered the words that passed between Coulson and Jemma, too busy trying to process the situation, then May’s arm was around her shoulders and she was being led away.

She hadn’t lost Jemma, but then came the mistakes. She’d killed Trip. No matter how many times it was made clear to her no one else believed it, there was still a part of her that blamed herself. If she hadn’t gone down there Trip wouldn’t have followed, he’d still be alive. Then Andrew... he died for her. He’d actually died for her. His life for hers... looking May in the eye after that was almost impossible.

And Lincoln. He might have lived... he could have lived. It should have been her or no one in that Quinjet. She’d accepted her death, she’d been ready, but there was no way she could have prepared herself what happened. After that everything hurt. It hurt to sleep in her bed. It hurt to see the mats in the sparring area. It hurt to walk past the common area in the morning, smell the coffee brewing, and know it wasn’t him making it. Even now, away from the base, when the wind was a bit too chilled her mind would go to him and his warmth, never cool to the touch with electricity sparking underneath his skin.

She was better off alone.

Daisy entered her apartment with a clatter of keys and a low sigh. It was dimly lit inside. Silent. She’d spent the last few years surrounded by people, agents swarming the base during the day, the occasional patter outside her door even in the dead of night. Unsurprisingly, Shield was full of people with sleep issues. It had never been silent. She’d never been truly alone there.

It wasn’t a big apartment, just three rooms. Living area, bedroom, and bathroom, all sparsely furnished. It had been all she’d could really afford on her savings, even though Shield had paid pretty well, seeing as she wasn’t working now and she wanted to keep the majority of her money in case she really needed it. She never used the money she took for herself. Considering she’d lived in a van for 2 years Daisy thought it was pretty spacious. She’d thought about renting a van, but she was pretty convinced Coulson would expect that. Unsurprisingly the apartment didn’t have as good a view out the windows as the bus had, since she was facing a brick wall, but considering the Base hadn’t had more than three windows and only on the top level, it made a nice change. She’d only been here a month, renting by the week, she’d probably move on again after the next payment.

Walking over to the far left window, rounding a worn, old couch sat in the middle of the room that she never sat on, Daisy tugged on the blind’s strings. Slowly, more light filtered into the room. Daisy squinted, taking a step back as the movement dislodged some dust from the top of the blinds.

Out the corner of her eye she saw movement. From the shadows in the far corner someone began to emerge.

Reacting with muscle-memory Daisy didn’t even give a thought to her training, taking her stance without prompting, ready for a fight. Maybe she’d be leaving this place a week earlier than planned. She made a mental calculation, figuring out the position of her go-bag, and whether she could run for it first, or stand and fight.

“You’re getting a little rusty.” A familiar voice chided; Melinda May stepped from the dark.

“May?” Daisy asked, unable to hide her confusion. Her upheld hands wavered a little.

“No sweep? You should have noticed me at least 5 seconds earlier.”

The tone May was using... just like the one that had become so familiar during Daisy’s training. She could almost smell the sweat, feel the heat of sparring room, and hear the slap of flesh against plastic as someone hit the mats. She felt like she was home again, and her heart began to ache.

“How did you find me?” Gauging that May probably wasn’t going to attack her, Daisy lowered her guard a little, returning her arms to her sides and standing up straight.

May didn’t answer verbally. She walked toward Daisy and drew a surveillance photograph from behind her back.

Daisy rolled her eyes at herself. “Careless.” She’d underestimated how well they knew her. It was an image taken through the window of Daisy’s favourite Indian place, from across the street it seemed, two days ago. “Why did Coulson send you?”

“He didn’t. Doesn’t know I’m here.” May answered simply.

“So...” Daisy began.

“I left.” May interrupted, cutting to the chase.

“Shield?” The girl didn’t manage to hide her shock. Shield without May seemed a very foreign concept.

May’s eyes flickered to the ground as she continued, “Coulson’s not director anymore.”

Daisy nodded, biting her lip, she knew that.

“And I was never loyal to Shield-”

“You were loyal to him.” Daisy interjected, finishing the sentence for her former SO.

There was a long pause. May considered Daisy’s appraisal of her devotions.

The woman adverted her gaze again, off toward the window, not able to look Daisy in the eye. “Not just to him,” she added in a slightly softer tone.

“You still see him though?”

May nodded.

Daisy wrung her hands together anxiously. “How is he?”

“Not great.” May said honestly.

Daisy tried to cover up her flinch. She shouldn’t feel guilty, Coulson was better off without her too, he just didn’t know it yet.

“That’s not why I’m here either.” May told her, taking a step forward. “I’m not going to guilt you back in, Daisy. When you come home, it’ll be for the right reasons.”

May sounded so sure of herself. Daisy huffed, shaking her head lightly. She was wrong, it would never feel right again, it couldn’t.

“I’m never going back to that base, May.”

“I didn’t say anything about a base.”

Daisy looked up slowly, and this time when their eyes met May didn’t look away. A split second later and the woman turned away, placing the surveillance photo on the kitchen counter as she made her way to the door.

“That’s it?” Daisy was in complete disbelief. She hadn’t seen May in months, and this was _it_. No fighting, no yelling, no being dragged back. May was just going to walk out the door, not knowing, probably not even caring, if she would ever see Daisy again. Daisy almost couldn’t blame her, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt.

May was almost at the door now.

“May!” Daisy yelled.

That did get her attention. May dropped the hand that was reaching for the latch, and looked back over her shoulder at the girl.

Standing in the middle of the dark room, trembling, eyes wide, clenched fists at her sides, Daisy looked like a fearful child. She spoke through gritted teeth, “Why can’t you just be angry at me?”

May moved back from the door, lips parting. This sight, Daisy like this, tormented her. It was everything she’d hoped she’d never see. And she blamed herself. She’d molded this girl in her image, unknowingly. This was her fault. “You think I’m not angry?”

Daisy was taken aback. She watched as her old SO cracked right in front of her eyes.

“Of course I am.” May hissed. “This is _everything_ I never wanted for you.”

Daisy was almost offended. “You told me to do some good. I did. I’m helping people. I’m doing what you said!”

May rolled her eyes. Frustrated, she clenched her jaw. “I didn’t just mean to do good by others, Daisy. I meant by yourself too. Damn it, didn’t you hear me when I told you not to shut yourself in a box?”

“I didn’t!” Daisy shot back defiantly.

“Then what is this? Shutting people out...” May breathed hard, nostrils flaring, “shutting out your family.”

Daisy turned away, head down. “I don’t have a family, May.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” Melinda May folded her arms, staring intently at the back of Daisy’s head, waiting for something that never came. “Trust me.”

Footsteps echoed, catching Daisy’s attention. May was going for the door again. The girl didn’t look even then; she waited, chin trembling, tears building in her eyes, for the slam of the front door.

“You remember who I was when we met?” The determined anguish in May’s voice dug into Daisy’s heart like a blunt knife. Still she didn’t turn, missing the single tear that fell from May’s eye, tumbling down the woman’s cheek, undisturbed.

May didn’t cry often. She’d cried once, deep into the early hours of the morning, for the little girl in Bahrain, for what had been lost there. She’d cried two times for Andrew, when she’d shot him, when he’d died. She’d cried three times for Coulson, in her car after the funeral, when she’d heard he was back... and a month ago... just seeing him the state he was, that was enough. He looked on the outside what she felt inside.

...She’d cried for Daisy four times. She’d cried beating Ian Quinn half to death as Daisy lay dying in a hospital bed, not aware enough to wipe away the track marks on her cheeks when Coulson had pulled her off the monster. She’d cried, teeth clenched tight, after Daisy had thrown her across that courtyard at Afterlife. She’d cried, out the way where no one could see, when she’d come to realise what had become of the girl she’d trained. The girl she'd raised. Looking in Daisy’s eyes only to see the same broken soul she saw in the mirror. It hurt so much more to see it in Daisy. 

Daisy recalled; the silent, lonely, broken woman in the cockpit. The woman who cut people out. The woman people didn’t understand. The woman who didn’t laugh anymore. The woman Daisy had helped save.

 _'This is everything I never wanted for you.’_ Daisy shut her eyes tighter, trying to push the voice from her mind, but it held on tight. _‘You weren’t meant to repeat my mistakes.’_

Daisy remembered what Coulson had told her all those years ago in his office on a plane that no longer exists. The first time she’d cried for Melinda May.

_‘May used to be different.’_

A tear escaped.

_‘Getting in trouble... pulling pranks, thought rules were meant to be broken. Sound familiar?’_

Daisy wasn’t really that person anymore either. Was that what she and May were? Parallel lives. But Hive, what she'd done, what she'd become, the choice she'd made...  was this Daisy’s Bahrain?

“Will you tell Coulson where I am?” Daisy swallowed. Her breathing uneven now, barely holding it all in. A growing part of her just wanted to scream.

“We both know you’d be gone by the time he got here.” May murmured, sounding resigned.

“Why did you even come, May?” Daisy whispered, barely loud enough for May to hear.

There was a long moment, then the click of the door opening, then the smack of it closing that to Daisy’s ears was nothing less than thunderous.

May was gone. Daisy was alone again. Once more, like she had every day for the last 6 months, she told herself it was all for the best.

 

 She believed herself a little less this time.

 

 

 

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  _please follow me at[@daisyqiaolainmay](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! i'm taking prompts_

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